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quinta-feira, 11 de setembro de 2014

The French and the English
lined up on opposite sides of the battlefield. The drums rose and rose until
they thundered in a deafening roar, at which point everyone agreed that it was
actually too loud. Could perhaps the drummers drum somewhere else, the French
and English generals asked, or did they know any softer songs? For this was no
ordinary battle. This was the Battle of Rock, Paper, Scissors (Shoot).

It was the English commander
Giles Smith, King Edward III’s chief military strategist, who needed quiet the
most. In a matter of moments, the battle would begin, and Smith needed to
think. He looked over his army, their metal weapons shining in the cold English
morning. “Did I choose the right attack?” he wondered.

A hundred yards across the
battlefield, the French Army stood. Its commander was a young man named
Napoleon, but not the famous one. He, too, looked over his army, and wondered
the exact same thing: “Have I already made a mistake?”

And then it began.

The two armies rushed toward
each other, screaming. The drummers looked at each other and resumed drumming.

The English troops were well
equipped. Their primary weapon was the Big Scissors: two giant cross-blades
bolted to one another by an oiled hinge that acted as a fulcrum. It required
three men to operate. Two soldiers stood inside metal loops, one attached to
each blade. Weaving zigzag down the battlefield, they opened and closed the
blades, hoping that they’d reach the enemy on the latter motion. A peasant boy
held up the hinge.

The attack strategy seemed
brilliant. No French soldier would run straight into the foreboding pinchers.
Smith had even drawn a doodle of crab claws chasing the French away, and shown
it in parlors, getting either a laugh or a “Yes, you showed us already. Very
amusing.”

Napoleon lowered his
telescope, and smirked. “Commencez à
smooshez les Anglais,” he yelled (“Begin to smush the English”).
French axes cut the ropes of the catapults. Enormous boulders stormed through
the air like asteroids.

Rocks.

The English took several
moments to understand where the boulders were coming from. After so many years
of gray and rainy weather, they’d forgotten that there was also a sky. The
giant rocks smashed the English cross-blades apart. The English soldiers
abandoned their metal loops and retreated, like my father and me after that
three-legged race.

It seemed like the English had
been defeated. The French broke out glasses of wine and four-cheese platters,
which they carried at all times. But they celebrated too soon. Smith had lured
Napoleon’s army into a trap.

An army of English butlers,
fluent in invisibility, had carried a hundred-square-yard sheet of paper to
cover the entire French Army from behind. The catapults caught on the paper.
The French struggled even to stand. The paper covered the rocks. Wine spilled
everywhere. Cheese was shed.

It comes to me at moments like
this one to pontificate on the role of chance in all matters of life, but
especially those of warfare. It seemed like Smith had won yet another victory,
but underneath the paper canopy a young French dressmaker would change the
course of the battle.

The dressmaker could hear the
sound of celebratory teakettles whistling. He began rummaging in his pockets
for his lucky pair of scissors. You see, he had promised his lovely new wife,
Juliette, that he would return to her. It was a promise that he intended to
keep, in the hope that it might lead to a ménage a trois with Juliette’s friend
Chloe. If the dressmaker had not been present, or if Chloe and Juliette had not
been so open-minded, the battle might have ended there. The dressmaker cut
through the paper, freed the French, and ran off yelling, “Juliette! Chloe!
Wai-i-i-t!”

For two full days, the French
and the English fought like this. The first day, the French won. The second
day, the English won. They agreed to fight a third day, and call it best two
out of three.

It was the final eve. Sleepy
campfires struggled to warm the aching soldiers, who had grown confused by all
the turnarounds. Napoleon, too, was exhausted. His valets feared that he was
going crazy as they watched him contort his hands into different positions. He
was trying to visualize the next move, but he kept throwing out scissors. Why?
Why did he always throw out scissors?

Smith felt even worse. He had
such a bad headache that he sent the drummers home once and for all. Were they
upset? Of course they were upset. Who wouldn’t be? I mean, you’re trying to do
a good job and help the team. But, look, you know what, they understood.

Meanwhile, the battlefield was
a complete mess: giant metal loops sticking out of the ground, giant boulders
wrapped in Bloomingdale’s gift paper, and paper-mache hats cut up into mulch
and swept up into the wind like confetti in a twister. Who was going to clean
this up?

“L’horreur, l’horreur,” Napoleon whispered.

Then a paper airplane landed
gently in his lap. Napoleon unfolded it, and read a message.

The next morning, Napoleon met
Smith where he had asked to meet in his note. Napoleon brought only a
translator. Smith had brought only his. They looked each other in the eye. The
translators watched in silence.

Smith smiled.

Napoleon began to laugh.

Then Smith began to laugh.

Then the translators began
laughing.

Before long, both armies were
laughing. They put their arms around each other and decided that they would
speak both French and English, and never fight another war again. And they
called themselves Canada.

And would you believe that, to
this day, not one person believes that any of this actually happened. What are
they, nuts?

A fly by imagination

And life passes so quickly...

Because literature is part of our history.

The main idea of this Blog is spread the habit of reading. Literature is part of our lives. When enter in the Literature world, we read better and we improve our though and imagination.I want, with this, divide a little of my dreams. Is to give opportunity to people read and know about works produced by ancient and contemporary writers, and mainly, myself to be insert in this wonderful world of the Letters.